Knowing Yourself Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint
And it took me way too long to figure it out...
The year was 2016, and I was enjoying the sweet taste of a soft rebirth. I was leaving a job I utterly hated for a new one. Formula 1 racing was finally going to be broadcast on TV again. For the first time in a while, I felt happy and re-energized.
A pretty cool thing about this new company was that they encouraged their staff to read, which I did. At first, I read business and marketing books, but eventually shifted to human psychology and personal development.
I did this for a few months, breaking some personal records when it came to the number of books I’d read. And this led me to voice my concern about forever being an employee for someone. I had such glimpses in the past as well (about 2–3 months into my first job).
As the number of books I read grew, so did the number of techniques I tried to apply to my daily life. But here’s the catch: the techniques were useful but incompatible with my status as an employee. It was also here that I thought to myself, “Is there another life for me out there?”
In short, I slowly realized that the job was slowly but surely going out of alignment with who I was becoming as a person. And the despair would only grow in time, as my accomplishments would start going unnoticed, while my mistakes would become more highlighted. Needless to say, this left me with some very bad moods…
During that time, I wrote, mostly about Dragon Ball and F1. From there, I geared towards programming tutorials, later combining them with music tutorials. That was towards the end of 2016 when I also built the first version of my website.
The idea of writing music-related lessons wasn’t new, as I first wrote a draft for a music book in 2014.
In 2017 or 2018 I realized I only wanted to write music tutorials, so I moved everything to a WordPress website and started churning out music tutorial after music tutorial.
Once again, I pivoted, for the 3rd time now. I was still enthused by this journey, but also a bit frustrated as I couldn’t seem to find the path that worked for me.
I then made a mistake that everyone who wants to work on their own does. I started doing stuff I thought people wanted, rather than stuff I’m good at that would have an audience. This is a common trap creators fall into. They create what they think is popular, even if it’s not something they enjoy doing…like I did.
I started creating programming tutorials again and rebuilt my website, again. I did that for a while, but I still didn’t feel it…at all. It was frustrating because, after all, programming was what I loved doing, right? Things should work themselves out, right? Surely, continuing to work on this will lead to some form of resolution, right?!
This was back in 2019, what with the site rebuilding and stuff. 2019 was also the first time I decided to go jobless. I despised everything about programming jobs. Programming itself is fine, don’t get me wrong, but the jobs are…ick.
I have a few issues with software development, and I do believe these are the reasons I started despising this environment.
First off, no one cares about accomplishments but is very eager to point out the mistakes.
Secondly, the amount of passive-aggressiveness I started noticing in people grew exponentially. And it’s not a place I want to be a part of, since it weighs me down emotionally and generally forces me to spend a considerable amount of time getting my emotions back in order.
And finally, technologies started changing way too fast and for seemingly no reason.
The end of 2019 though…saw the biggest breakthrough I had. I was hanging around the Syn Gates guitar school and out of some sheer unexplainable desire, I started fiddling with VSTs (digital instruments).
I think I sat at my computer, unmoved, for about 3 hours. I became an immovable entity. I wanted to understand those concepts so badly. Nothing was stopping me from wanting to learn that. I entered a flow state without even knowing.
Everything made sense. I was rejuvenated and filled with childlike energy. You know, the feeling that you can accomplish anything, be it writing the next epic guitar solo, or flying to the moon, or whatever you dreamt of.
It was then that I decided to drop the programming bit completely from my “working on my own“ plans. It would remain only a job (and even that was temporary, as I got out of it completely in 2020), not something to focus on in my own time.
It was then I knew I wanted to make music. I mean, I always wanted to do that, but I was kinda afraid.
One pandemic later (or rather, in the year 2021), I better understood who I actually was and what I wanted to do. I want to make music. I want to teach people how to make music. I want to write stuff, both music and non-music-related. These are the things I want to do. It took me 5 years to get to that point.
And here we are in 2025. I am fully aware of who I am and have embraced about 90% of it. The last 10% is harder to get, and as The Vulture from Brooklyn 99 would say, that’s why they keep it in yoghurt (he said it with milk, but you get the idea).
But this is the point. Knowing yourself and understanding who you are takes an incredible amount of time and dedication. Much like wizards though, epiphanies are never late, nor are they early, they arrive just when they are required to.
Here’s the funny thing, whenever I envisioned myself as being creative, be it in music or writing, I was always at peace. Like, I knew there were going to be hurdles down the line, but I wasn’t really afraid. My attitude was always: “it’ll work out somehow, I don’t know how, but it will.”
I am Andrew Milner, signing out. Thank you for reading my story, and I will see you in the next one.
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It's a slow roll getting to know ourselves. But if we let it all unfold, the answers show up, but as we grow and change, I suppose we need to be open to having that answer change as well. I also love the point you make about not knowing how things are going to work out, but you trust it will. That's not easy to do and takes some serious spiritual strength to settle into that mode.
Thanks, Andrew.
Andrew, this is a beautiful essay. I loved how you described that feeling of being out of alignment with your work – I've totally been there! And the part about falling into that "creator's trap" – so relatable!